way to include his own personality in the chain of romance as its final link.  The garden was spread before her.  The underground passage she knew, and it wound directly beneath her feet.  The chapel, the statue, the ruins of the little temple, the monastery encircling like a low crown the summit of the distant mountain, all were before her; and beside her was a son of the same race, of the same blood.  She wondered vaguely why it was so much more apparent in Don Giovanni than in her uncle the prince.  Prince Sansevero seemed quite modern; the Marchese di Valdo, though more modern actually than his brother, still seemed to keep his touch on the age that was past.

“Do these old legends please you, Mademoiselle?  Or are you too restless?  Too progressive?  Americans, like the horse Pegasus, leap into the air without any need of foundation to stand on.  We, over here, build, like the coral reefs, slowly perhaps, but always from the foundation up.”

“I think,” said Nina slowly; “it is the mystery of the past that makes it so wonderful.  We never can know quite enough about it.  All legends are like pictures seen through a fog; it lifts and shows a glimpse, then as quickly closes in again.  I always want to know what happened next.”

As she said this, she realized that she was more or less making an allegorical description of Giovanni himself.  He was like his country and its traditions, revealing himself only in glimpses.  He attracted her immensely through his subtle impersonality underlying all that was seemingly personal.  She could not fathom his depth, nor determine his shallowness—­she did not even guess which it might be.  She was irresistibly drawn to him; yet she was on her guard, as one who, looking down from a great height, in fear of vertigo clings to the parapet over which he leans.  The parapet she clung to was her own good American common sense.  Yet she feared she did not know what.  A little gleam in Giovanni’s dark eyes, a curious, deliberate, intentionally produced expression of his smiling lips, swept over her sensibilities with a feeling that was as terrifying as it was delicious—­and both perhaps because it was strange.

A little look—­like triumph—­flickered in his face; he laughed joyously.  “Mademoiselle, you are—­adorable!” he said.

CHAPTER VII

ROME

Christmas and New Year’s passed, and the Sansevero household moved to Rome.  The princess was impatient to have Nina meet people, but from the first glimpse of the domed City its immortal charm claimed the American girl, and for a little while she had neither time nor inclination for anything but sight-seeing.  She fairly hungered for history and tradition, and she soon made the discovery that if Don Giovanni did nothing, he at least knew a great deal.

She marveled at his memory.  He seemed to have every name and date in the history of Rome and Italian art at the tip of his tongue.  One afternoon they were going through the apartments of the Borgias; the princess, tired out with sight-seeing, was sitting at the edge of the room, and Giovanni was following Nina and pointing out the story illustrated in the frescoes.